About Chick Lit Chicks

The Definition of Chick Lit

Sub-Genres of Chick Lit

History of Chick Lit

Best-selling chick lit title The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus is now filming, with Scarlett Johansson playing nanny to the child of a spoiled Park Avenue wife. And, of course, Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason became hit films starring Renee Zellweger.

But even as Hollywood has come calling, chick lit has received some negative attention, thanks to the plagiarism scandal surrounding How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan. It was removed from shelves in May after it was discovered that Viswanathan had lifted material from other chick lit authors.

The term chick lit has created a backlash, with some practitioners believing the term is demeaning and limiting.

But love it or hate it, chick lit continues to find an audience. Three titles were on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list: The Devil Wears Prada, Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner and The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. And like the characters whose twentysomething hopes and dreams they deconstruct, chick lit is experiencing growing pains with such spinoffs as bridezilla lit, mommy lit and multicultural lit.

At the same time, booksellers and publishers agree the market has been flooded with formulaic titles lacking originality.

Some authors, including Weiner, Kinsella and Marian Keyes, have tried to adapt by replacing twentysomething characters with women in their 30s and 40s, hoping readers will follow. These characters have married and are having babies or struggling over whether to have them.

"I wrote my first books when I was single, and then I got married and then had a kid, and there were different things happening in my life," says Weiner, who also has written best sellers Good in Bed, Little Earthquakes and In Her Shoes, which last year was made into a movie.

Still, the genre also is riddled with one-hit wonders and books some say should never have been published.

"Publishers nailed it in a way no one had ever done before," says Liate Stehlik of Avon Books. "Like anything, when something is successful, it explodes, and there are a million things like it. Some are really good, and some are subpar." Stehlik compares the genre's history to the glut of reality TV shows in the past several years.

But readers also are seeking fresh experiences "and not just copycats of what is working," she says.

Example: Spooning by Darri Stephens and Megan DeSales. The recently published book's jacket is hot pink with an illustration of a gorgeous brunette cooking in a sexy halter-top dress. Spooning has all the classic ingredients with a soupcon of difference: The novel's young women form a cooking club.

"The food angle is fresh and hadn't been done before," says Ann Campbell, a senior editor at Broadway Books. "There are recipes in every chapter, and the food and the food metaphors lent themselves to some creative marketing."

Some chick lit is tackling edgier, darker questions. One new author who is doing so is Jennifer Solow, whose novel The Booster features Jillian Siegel, who is 29, works in advertising and has a tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend. What makes Solow's character unique, says Greer Hendricks, an editor at Booster publisher Atria, is that she is addicted to shoplifting.

Whether the covers are pink or black, authors believe the genre has a viable future because story lines and characters mirror society. Says Nina Foxx, author of Just Short of Crazy and a pioneer in African-American chick lit: "Women are dealing with the same issues that are in the books and are trying to make sense of their lives."

Chicago Sun-Times, Jun 28, 2006 by Carol Memmott